Purpose
by TakeshiKovacs987
Summary: Seeing only shades of unnatural colors, I looked down and instantly regretted it. The scorched earth was littered with crumbling artifacts made of burnt flesh and eroded stone. This is only a preview chapter of a larger story that I've been thinking of


_When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  
- Chapter 13, verse 11_

10:25 again. My turn to look for prisoners. I didn't relish this part of the job. I glanced at the sky for any sign of an enemy air raid. The Brazilian sun was warped into varying shades of purple and orange due to the chemical smog that coated the atmosphere above South America. It looked beautiful in an unearthly way. Seeing only shades of unnatural colors, I looked down and instantly regretted it. The scorched earth was littered with crumbling artifacts made of burnt flesh and eroded stone. I was thankful for the armor that they gave every marine on the ground. It was made of a special blend of polymer integrated with various alloys to make it light and tough, but that wasn't what I was grateful for at the moment. There was a helmet with air filters built in to combat nerve gas. No nerve gas at the moment, but I was saved from smelling the results of our handiwork.

A twitch in a small pile of rubble caught my eye. It was a woman. She was still clinging onto life and if she got medical attention soon she would continue doing so. I approached her and she looked at me with pleading eyes, too busy in her agony to care that I was one of the soldiers that destroyed her life and home. In a single fluid motion I drew my pistol and shot her between the eyes. I also noticed that she was pretty and the type of men that the corps had drawn in the aftermath of the angel wars was mostly criminals and rapists. The UN was desperate for men to put down the uprisings in Latin America and the prisons were already full of ready made sociopaths. Immediately I felt bile build up at the back of my throat. I swallowed it in order to avoid blocking my vision in my helmet. I didn't feel particularly vindicated by saving her from the gang rapes and humiliation that would've awaited her had I taken her prisoner. I've done this over 94 times now. Each time was worse than the last. I knew the fate that would await them and that I was being merciful by making sure that they joined their departed loved ones instead of living in a perpetual hell. Part of me took satisfaction in having retained some "civilized" humanity due to my self loathing, but another took disgust at how weak I was at doing the right thing. The unfortunate part of an eidetic memory is that I remembered the look on every person I killed.

11:40. My patrol was over. As I walked back to base, I wondered how I came to this. I myself was in a German prison when I was "given the offer for redemption and a chance to prove my patriotism." Luckily they didn't notice that I bore a resemblance to one of the saviors of the world. I felt a grim amusement at how different I was from when I was a teenager that still sought my mother's love and my father's approval. I still desired those things, but I only really received the latter strangely enough. Father was still manipulating me from beyond the grave. Because of his approval, I started to open up and I lived. I loved. And I lost in the deepest sense of the word. The unfathomable agony and emptiness finally let me understand father. However, unlike him I glimpsed something massive and terrifying. I saw a horrible crucifixion. People were dissolving into what looked like LCL. I saw an angel that NERV never fought and yet I knew beyond a doubt that it existed and was destroyed. It looked like Rei but held an inhuman and alien presence. Rei was always strange and later I learned that she was half angel, but she was still somewhat human in presence. This thing however was simply enormous and terrifying. The grief was reason enough for me to leave the comfort of Japan, but the visions were something that gave me a purpose to latch onto.

The guards at the gate tentatively greeted me and I acknowledged with a slight nod. I knew that I gained a reputation as an extremely efficient and distant soldier. I refused to join in on the rapes and never came back with prisoners. The only reason that they felt even remotely comfortable with me was that I killed women and children. This made me as dirty as the rest of them. What they never realized was that I did it out of mercy, while they only killed combatants. This didn't make them any better than me though. They enslaved the prisoners and often cruelly tortured them for no reason other than them being "spics" and savagely devolving into tribes and warring kingdoms while rejecting the "enlightened" UN in the aftermath of second impact. Hearing the doglike grunts of a soldier and the choked whimpers of a woman as I passed the slave quarters, I certainly felt "enlightened." I lied down as soon as I reached my bunk. It was a familiar ceiling but like in the hospital I found myself overcome with revulsion every time I saw it. I closed my eyes in hopes of escaping my thoughts and self disgust. I took solace in the fact that everybody in NERV had found some peace from their trauma. I wasn't jealous because I wasn't a child anymore. Misato had been through much worse than me by being neglected and losing her father that way. Now she was married to Kaji and living quite well off of her pension. Last I heard of Asuka, she was a model and starred in a couple of movies beforehand, but quit it to take some government position. I guess fame has its benefits in politics. The bridge bunnies had gone on to become tech support in Japan's cyber security force and one of them was married I think. Rei was the real shocker when I was last in contact with the real world. She was a top model and designer living in Paris. I never pegged Rei as the creative type, but her designs had taken off around the world and it didn't hurt that she was a former EVA pilot to boost the celebrity. I was honestly happy for them. Strangely enough living in a warzone only made me appreciate the mundane more. I often wondered if I should desert and go north to America, but the terrible sense of purpose kept me in place. At last I fell asleep into an uneasy rest.

AN: This is just a sort practice run for a full story that I'm writing. This is meant to be vague in a lot of ways because good exposition takes time and patience. The lack of memory of third impact is intentional, so cool your jets. There is a lot of backstory to this chapter, but I'll post the full story later. For now I just wanted to test the waters. Also, this is not a fully military Shinji focused story. There's a lot more to his journey that I want to add.


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